AMBUSHED BY THE COPS: WHEN POLICE DELIBERATELY TRAP PEACEFUL PROTESTERS – By Alice Speri (The Intercept) / June 2 2021
An Intercept and SITU reconstruction of an incident in North Carolina last June shows police intentionally trapped and tear-gassed hundreds of peaceful protesters.
SEVERAL HUNDRED PEOPLE were marching through downtown Charlotte, North Carolina, last year when a few dozen police officers in riot gear jumped off a city bus and lined up along the march route. It was the fifth consecutive day of protests in the city, where, like in scores of other places across the country, thousands had taken to the streets following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
That night, June 2, protesters peacefully approached the intersection of College and Fourth streets, when suddenly, those at the front of the march turned around and started running back: Officers positioned ahead of them had started firing tear gas and flash-bang devices directly at the advancing crowd. As people ran backward, they were met by the officers who had jumped off the bus, now closing in. Within a few chaotic moments, protesters found themselves caught between a line of cops on one end of the road, a cloud of tear gas on the other, and tall buildings on both sides. As the gas thickened, people began screaming and gasping for air.
“They closed the whole group in between a line of riot officers and a wall of tear gas,” Justin LaFrancois, a local journalist who was livestreaming the protest, told The Intercept. “Nobody ever gave a dispersal order or said where people were supposed to leave from. They blocked all the exits with tear gas, and nobody was going to just run through the tear gas, because if you did, you were getting shot with pepper bullets.”
CONTINUE > https://theintercept.com/2021/06/02/kettling-protests-charlotte-police/
